Cream

7
Annotations

from "Pepys at Table"Cream Toasts(referenced to July 13, 1665 entry)from Patrick Lamb "Royal Cookery" 1710"Take two French rolls or more according to the bigness of your dish, and cut them in thick slices, as thick as your finger, crumb and crust, lay them on a silver or brass dish, put to them a pint of cream, 1/2 pint of milk, strew over them beaten cinnamon and sugar, turn them frequesntly till they are tender soaked, so as you can turn them without breaking; so take them with a slice or skimmer for your cream; break 4 or 5 raw eggs, turn your slices of bread in the eggs and fry them in clarified butter; make them a good brown colour, not black; take care of burning them in frying; scrape a little sugar round them, have a care you make them not too sweet. You may well serve them hot for a 2nd course, being well drained from your butter in which you fried them; but they are most proper for a plate of a little dish for supper."

What we call "French Toast" out here in my life. I am therefore quite taken with the beginning instructions to "take two French rolls...". And we too go for a "good brown colour, not black." And we call that "beaten cinnamon and sugar" 'cinnamon sugar'.

Yes! French Toast! I had some last week for breakfast at the markets (sitting under a huge fig tree, watching a regatta on the river - lots of frantic, squaling teenaged girls all called Alice, Sarah or Rachel encouraging their 8s or 4s), but mine was served with marscopone and caramalised pears. Melding of food cultures.

I know this dish as "Pain Perdu" (lost bread). I got the recipe from a cookbook by Lesley Blanche, written for teens back in the sixties. She tells a story about each recipe in the book. Re: this one -- the French do not waste anything, and always make something wonderful to eat with very little. Pepys's Cream toast and Blanche's "Pain Perdue" are a bit different from the French Toast Grandma used to make and serve with maple syrup - that was stale sliced white bread, soaked in a mix of egg, milk, and salt and pepper (no sugars), and fried in butter to golden brown. It was definitely for breakfast, while Pepys' and Blanche's would be more appropriate for dessert nowadays.

I know this dish as "Pain Perdu" (lost bread). I got the recipe from a cookbook by Lesley Blanche, written for teens back in the sixties. She tells a story about each recipe in the book. Re: this one -- the French do not waste anything, and always make something wonderful to eat with very little. Pepys's Cream toast and Blanche's "Pain Perdue" are a bit different from the French Toast Grandma used to make and serve with maple syrup - that was stale sliced white bread, soaked in a mix of egg, milk, and salt and pepper (no sugars), and fried in butter to golden brown. It was definitely for breakfast, while Pepys' and Blanche's would be more appropriate for dessert nowadays.

"A fool. Take a pint of the sweetest and thickest Creame that can be gotten, and set it on the fire in a very cleane scowred skiller, and put in sugar, cinammon, and a nutmeg, cut into foure quarters, and so boyle it well: then take the yelkes of foure eggs, and take off the filmes, and beate them well with a little sweete creame: then take the foure quarters of the nutmeg out of the creame, then put in the egges, and stir it exceedingly, till it be thicke: then take a fine Manchet (fine white bread loaf) and cut it into thin shives, as much as will cover a dish-bottome, and holding it in your hand, powre halfe the creame into the dish: then lay your bread over it, then cover the bread with the rest of the creame, and so let it stand till it be cold: then strow it over with caraway Comfets, and prick up some cinamon Comfets, and some slic't dates; or for want thereof, scrape all over it some sugar, and trim the sides of the dish with sugar, and so serve it up."